Call Me
by LKK
Summary: Rikuo has noticed that Kazahaya never calls him by his name and wonders if Kazahaya would ever call him by his first name. [shonen ai]


**Summary:** Rikuo has noticed that Kazahaya never calls him by his name and wonders if Kazahaya would ever call him by his first name.

**Warnings: **Spoilers for Legal Drug manga volumes 2 and 3. References to homosexuality.

**Disclaimer:** All recognizable characters and situations are the property of Clamp, Kadokawa Shoten Publishing Co. Ltd., and Tokyopop Inc. This fiction is for entertainment purposes only. No copyright infringement is intended.

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You never call me by my name, Kazahaya. Do you think I haven't noticed? I know you know it; yet I've never heard you say it.

We were introduced the day after I found you near-frozen, semi-conscious, lying in the plaza, dying in the snow. I picked you up and carried you to the warmth of the apartment that would become your home for these past months. You slept the night and through the next day while I watched, wondered, and worried. I wondered who you were, wondered why you were alone, wondered if you had run away from someone or if you had been abandoned by someone. I wondered why this apartment I lived in had two beds when I arrived though I could only use one of them. Had this other bed been waiting for you as Kakei hinted when he told me to put you in it after I brought you home? And if that was so, why was it so? As the night and the day wore on, I worried you would never wake up. Mostly though as I watched you sleep, I wondered why I had rescued a strange young man — no, still a boy really — and brought him home. (I know the answer to that question now. The others I continue to wonder about.)

To my relief, you woke the next evening and that was when you met us. After a few muddled questions ("Where am I?" "What happened?"), you introduced yourself as Kudo Kazahaya. You said you had no home and no background though I believe that was because you chose to speak of neither. Then you asked who we were. Kakei introduced himself — the man who would become your landlord, your employer at the drugstore where you would work, and the giver of extraordinary, often supernatural, retrieval assignments. Then he introduced Saiga — the man who would become your daily tormentor through nigh constant teasing. Finally, he introduced me, Himura Rikuo — the man who would become your roommate and your co-worker at the drugstore and in those retrieval assignments, the man who would come to love you secretly, the man whose name you have never said.

I know you know my name, Kazahaya. I watched you mouth it to yourself that wintry evening. Yet I have never heard you say it.

Of course, two people cannot live and work together for months without calling each other some name or another. You have several names for me. "Big lug" and "asshole" are two I remember you saying when you were angry with me. (I may be large by Japanese standards, but to call me a "lug" seems unfair, Kazahaya.) When you're not angry, you usually just call me "you". I suspect you have plenty of names for me when you think of me. If I had to guess based on your expressions, I suspect names like "jerk", "loser", or "bastard" cross your mind frequently.

But do you ever think of me using my name, Kazahaya?

I wish I knew if you say my name in your thoughts. Do you? And if you do, what form do you use when think of me? Are you formal and distant? Using my family with a proper honorific attached to it, Himura-san? Like the way you address Kakei? Despite your behavior to the contrary, maybe you're friendlier to me in your thoughts. Maybe you think of me as Himura-kun? Or maybe an even closer form of address such as Rikuo-kun? Or perhaps … perhaps your name for me in your thoughts is the same as my name for you in my thoughts: my given name alone, a name so familiar, so intimate, that it is reserved for family, very close friends, and lovers.

I think of you with your given name, Kazahaya. How do you think of me?

You've never said my name. And I admit I haven't said yours aloud either. Like you, I have other names to use when I want your attention. I've called you "child", "Little Miss Virgin" (I liked that one), "this guy", and "loser". I call you "idiot" a lot. You always seem to deserve it at the time, but I never mean it cruelly. After last night when we retrieved that magical cat spirit and you jumped on top of the fence and ran along the ledge, I think I'll add "animal" and "cat" to the list. (Maybe I'll even call you "kitten" when you're being especially immature.) But I always call you "Kazahaya" in my thoughts. Just as a lover might call you.

I long to call you "Kazahaya" aloud. I can't do it though. I've learned this.

There is much I haven't learned about you yet. However, there are some things I know. I know that I can tease you and torment you about many subjects — the fact that you oversleep, your virginity, your fainting spells, your inability to keep quiet, your enchantingly sexy looks. (Although I don't mention the "enchanting" part and say the "sexy" part as if it were a tease. It isn't.)

I know there are some things I cannot say or do. I won't ask why you had collapsed in the plaza the night I found you. I won't ask you about the girl whose name you shouted in the park last night when the cat spirit showed us a vision of the person we each wanted to see most. I won't tease you when you say the traditional "Itadakimasu" before a meal.

And I won't call you by your name without your permission. You are too bound by formality and tradition for me to make that mistake. To be that close to you — that intimate with you — without your approval would anger you. It would offend you more than any teasing I might do. That closeness might even panic you, frighten you so thoroughly as to scare you away. I will not make that mistake. I never want you to run away from me like you ran away from wherever you were before, from whomever you were with before.

So I call you by any number of substitute names instead, keeping your given name silent in my head. I wait for the day when you ask me to call you something other than "idiot" or "animal". I wait for a sign that I may be allowed closer to you and permitted to say your name. And I hope for the day you call me "Rikuo" in return.

Call me by my given name, Kazahaya, and I shall call you by yours. And perhaps one day, we will speak to each other as lovers do.

**To be continued…**


End file.
